Molly Burhans

Molly Burhans is an internationally recognized leader in cartography, social entrepreneurship, conservation, and innovative strategies for faith-based impact-driven property use and management. Molly is the Executive Director and Founder of GoodLands, a social enterprise that assists Catholic communities around the world to realize the potential of their property to support missions in environmental and social justice while improving their financial management. GoodLands digitizes and maps records, including land records, to lay a foundation for evidence-based, community grounded, design-driven land-use. Their initiatives include the architecting and implementation of The Catholic Geospatial Infrastructure that supports open access to over 300 data sets, apps, and maps that GoodLands has curated. Other significant projects are global mapping of the Vincentian Family, The Global Catholic Carbon Footprint, a global biodiversity assessment of the Catholic Church, a green infrastructure assessment of all Catholic-affiliated properties in the USCCB, a map of Catholic communications infrastructure throughout Africa for the Dicastery of Communications, global and historical mapping of Catholic healthcare and childcare infrastructure, and a variety of other GIS-related projects for dioceses and organizations. In addition, GoodLands has been at the forefront of the discussion and the development of geospatial information policy, standards, and security as it relates the Holy See and Catholic institutions and organizations, including the development of whitepapers and reports. Molly was the Chief Cartographer of the first unified global, digital map of the Catholic Church. This map and its derivatives illuminated the Catholic Church's global presence and people for the first time in history. These maps were premiered at the Vatican Arts and Technology Council in 2016. In 2018 Molly was given Papal approval to establish a trial-run cartography institution under the aegis of the Holy See. This offer is currently under negotiation; if established, it would be the first woman-founded institute in the history of the Roman Curia and the first new scientific institute established since the Observatory was founded to develop the Gregorian Calendar we still use today. Molly’s awards include the Sierra Club's 2021 EarthCare Award (past awardees include Wangari Muta Maathai, Sir David Attenborough, President Andrés Pérez, and the Black Mambas) and the United Nations Young Champion of the Earth Award in 2019 for North America (the UN's highest award for youth-driven environmental activism and solutions). She is a 2021 National Geographic Emerging Explorer, a Henry Arnhold Conservation Fellow (2020, Mulago Foundation), an Ashoka Fellow for social entrepreneurship, and Grist Fixer (2019). It is notable that this is the first time that many of these awards have recognized explicitly faith-based work, setting a new precedent for the role of religious leadership in social entrepreneurship, innovation, and environmentalism. Molly’s vision and solutions for realizing the potential of real estate portfolios' as powerful leverage points for change, including helping to ground Catholic Social Teaching and the vision of Laudato Si' in the way we use our land, have been shared widely. She has been profiled and interviewed by media outlets around the world and has given a number of keynote addresses.

People, land, information, communication, geodesign, Ignatian spirituality, systems, designing, building.

Management and use of property with purpose.

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